Ablekuma North: Valerie Sawyerr urges EC to rerun outstanding constituency polls – Nsemkeka
Presidential Advisor for Governmental Affairs, Dr Valerie Esther Sawyerr, has called on the Electoral Commission (EC) to rerun elections at 62 polling stations in the Ablekuma North Constituency.
She insists that the collation process in those areas was compromised and lacks legitimacy.
In a strongly worded statement titled “The Saga of the Scanned Pink Sheets & Ablekuma North”, Dr Sawyerr raised concerns about what she described as serious flaws in how the EC handled the collation of results following the December 2024 general elections.
“No ground stomping, no walks from Timbuktu to Accra… will make what is wrong… right,” she wrote. “Order a rerun at the sixty-two (62) polling stations… and stop wasting our time.”
The dispute centres on violent incidents that occurred during the collation of results at the Ablekuma North centre. According to Dr Sawyerr, those events led to the destruction of original carbonated pink sheets – the official result forms used to verify vote counts.
She explained that only 219 of the 281 polling stations had their results properly collated using the original forms. The remaining 62 were left without validated results, creating a credibility gap in the final outcome.
Dr Sawyerr also pointed to what she sees as internal confusion within the Electoral Commission. She stated that Dr Benjamin Bannor Bio, the EC’s Director of Elections, had earlier rejected the use of scanned pink sheets in place of the original carbonated forms.
However, that position was later reversed by the EC’s Director of Training, Dr Sereboe Quaicoe – a development she believes was irregular and unjustified.
“On what authority does a Director for Training overturn the decision of a Director of Elections at this stage of the electioneering process?” she questioned.
According to her statement, the EC eventually accepted 42 scanned pink sheets provided by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), despite objections from the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
In an attempt to validate the forms, the EC reportedly brought in 17 presiding officers to confirm the information. But Dr Sawyerr claims many of them failed to verify the authenticity of the documents.
She accused the Electoral Commission of acting unfairly and misleading the public, stating: “The voice of the people must be heard… Let us all tell the EC that enough is enough.”
Dr Sawyerr said peace in Ablekuma North cannot be guaranteed without electoral justice. She urged the EC to take responsibility and uphold democratic values by rerunning the elections in the affected polling stations.
She also condemned the EC’s claim that all parties had agreed to accept the scanned pink sheets, calling it a “bold-faced lie.”
In her closing remarks, she appealed for calm but insisted on justice: “I am for peace… Shalom.”